Ok, finished the last monk quest by abusing drac's piety on life steal. What I did was use a monk dwarf. Converted a few runes to gain around +3 health (with powerups). Got 20 piety by losing 10 health bringing me down to 3. Then focused on punching without killing any low level enemies (I took a -2 damage taken shield). The life steal over came the damage they did for the most part. I walked around a bit to let the monsters recover, then repeated the process gaining more and more life steal. Eventually I got 50 life steal I took out some high level monster to gain some good exp. And managed to take out super meat man at level 5 by stabbing him a couple of times then running off to stab some lower level monsters. From there I used the rest of my piety gains to get more max mana and managed to get my self a poison blade and enough health to blast tower of goo a few times before stabbing it and regenerating some mana. In the end I did the dungeon without using any potions (could have done it without the blade if I used up all my potions).

Oh, right... and brought triblade with me... because you know, it really help a monk

These sorts of tactics could be used in the alpha to game piety out of Taurog (before worship) or Jehora Jeheyu (after worship), but neither of them offered boons as powerful as beta Dracul. The problem with beta Dracul is that he's completely balanced on the principle that gaining piety is really really hard, so any way to make piety easily as a follower of Dracul essentially breaks him.

Uploaded with ImageShack.usThat up there is me using a drawven monk with a vampiric blade. The blade was primarily used to get easy piety with drac. I weaken myself on purpose to lower my damage to 1 to maximize the number of hits a monster could take, then it was just a matter grinding myself up to +75 life steal and at least 38 base HP so with 200% HP I can survive an attack. After that the indomitable died from a couple hundred cuts.

Overpowered? MAYBE. Just because a nearly impossible dungeon using a particular tactic doesn't mean that tactic is overpowered. It just means you found a clever way to beat the dungeon. However, if that tactic is a strategy that universally works in every situation, then we need to consider taking it down a notch.

For example, in the halls of steel, I really think that dungeon is built for rooting out overpowered exploits. If the game is balanced, that dungeon may not be beatable under most circumstances, but then if the game was balanced in such a way, that dungeon needs to be knocked back in difficulty a bit.

I suspect most of the vicious dungeons are designed to do entirely what you describe. They're significantly more difficult than the boss hive, although part of that difficulty is that shops and alters have been heavily nerfed since alpha and represent a far more tempered asset to players.

PeaceChaser wrote:Overpowered? MAYBE. Just because a nearly impossible dungeon using a particular tactic doesn't mean that tactic is overpowered. It just means you found a clever way to beat the dungeon. However, if that tactic is a strategy that universally works in every situation, then we need to consider taking it down a notch.

For example, in the halls of steel, I really think that dungeon is built for rooting out overpowered exploits. If the game is balanced, that dungeon may not be beatable under most circumstances, but then if the game was balanced in such a way, that dungeon needs to be knocked back in difficulty a bit.

Absolutely this! Overpowered gets thrown around a lot in these forums. So many times it's someone working out something clever that works in specific situations, there's no need to nerf such things.If there's specific exploits to beat specific dungeons then fine, such things SHOULD exist, it's part of the fun of a game, working out how to abuse the rules. If there's something that renders the entire game challengeless, that's a problem.

On one of the hardest dungeons, I didn't kill many things, I could have. I didn't buy anything, or use any spells. This strat works well if the boss does 85 or less damage. And is decent even if it does more. It works with weakness, lower resistance, mana burn, undead, poison. Even if the boss has a high attack, you can use a lesser version of this strat to survive a very large attack by life draining weaker enemies beyond 100%

I agree that exploits tend to crop up in situations with extremes. For example, 50 levels of death protection is pretty heavy at first, but I already guessed that lifesteal could be exploited in situations where boss does less than average damage (100% for normal enemies is 75).

I'm glad people like the new lifesteal overheal mechanic, and I really want to keep it because of the interesting scenarios it produces, but I probably went a little overboard in giving Dracul extra piety gain alongside it.

I like keeping Halls of Steel as it is to catch these sort of exploits. I keep tabs on what advanced players are doing, see what clever tactics they come up with and decide if they're just really cool ideas or oversimplifying the game enough to not make it fun or interesting anymore.

The problem with halls of steel is that the crypt was after it. If you don't find a really clever way to beat that level, you don't get to continue on to the crypt. If the monk got nerfed more, I don't even know what I would do to complete that dungeon. I honestly think I've tried everything else. I really thought the sorcerer would work....

I beat the crypt with the monk too. Every time you hit the head vampire, it hides the other vampires. Uncovering them damages you less than you heal around level 8, so you can hit the boss, then uncover the other two vampires, then hit the boss again. Exploit? I think not - just a clever way to beat that dungeon.